Inside the yellow building on the corner of Norodom and Pochentong boulevards, two huge walk-in refrigerators hold most of the nation’s blood supply. This is where blood donations collected at the 15 provincial blood transfusion centers are sent for testing and storage.
Now, more than 150 units of blood are in storage at the Ministry of Health’s National Blood Transfusion Center—a “decent supply” that reflects Cambodia’s improved collection efforts, according to Dr Oscar Barreneche, a World Health Organization blood safety expert and adviser to the center.
But it is still not enough for emergencies, like the 1998 dengue fever outbreak that required thousands of blood transfusions. The National Blood Transfusion Center needs about 450 units per month to keep a sufficient stock.
An agreement made last week with Thailand’s Public Health Ministry will help Cambodia recruit more blood donors and test donations for blood contaminated with HIV, Hepatitis B or C and syphilis.
Blood donations are screened for HIV, Hepatitis B and C and syphilis at the National Blood Transfusion Center, said Barreneche. In addition to giving advice on how to recruit blood donors, Thai officials will also check the quality of blood tests.
Thailand collects much more blood than Cambodia, recruiting donors from monks and high school and university students, groups that are considered less likely to be disease carriers.
Cambodia also collects blood from students and monks, but a larger effort is needed to convince them that giving blood is safe, Barreneche said.
Barreneche said he has seen the two “cold chambers” at the National Blood Transfusion Center almost empty on occasion. And even though 21,221 units of blood were collected last year at the government’s provincial and national blood transfusion centers and at Phnom Penh’s private Kantha Bopha Hospital—a small increase from the 20,475 units collected in 1999—there is still a great need for blood donations.
Most of the blood available in Cambodia’s blood banks came from family members of patients in need of transfusions, Dr Kheang Bomith of the National Blood Transfusion Center told the Bangkok Post last week.
That’s because family members of hospital patients often ask professional blood donors, who hang around hospital waiting rooms, to give blood in exchange for money. Blood transfusion centers don’t pay donors, according to Barreneche, but relatives of patients would rather pay others to donate blood because of the prevailing belief in Cambodian society that giving blood can make you weak or sick.
Professional blood donors, however, tend to have higher rates of disease infection, Barreneche said. In 2000, 19 percent of blood units donated to the National Blood Transfusion Center were discarded.
